


the deepest secret nobody knows

by Jaded



Series: I Carry You in My Heart (A Time Traveler's Wife AU series) [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife, F/M, Mutual Pining, Time Travel, Tumblr: rebelcaptainprompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 14:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11209575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaded/pseuds/Jaded
Summary: In a life full of upheaval and abandonment, Cassian Andor remains Jyn Erso's one constant, in and out of time.ATime Traveler's WifeAU. Companion piece to "the root of the root (and the bud of the bud)."





	the deepest secret nobody knows

 

 

_here is the deepest secret nobody knows_

_(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud_

_and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows_

_higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)_

_and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart_

 

_i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)_

 

_\--e.e. cummings_

* * *

* * *

 

 

“Who are you?”

 

Cassian had asked her this once when he had just been a child. He’d been round-cheeked and bright-eyed, bundled up in warm furs on his home planet of Fest. Jyn had noted right away the slingshot in his hand and how he’d held it loose in his fingers as though even before he knew her—who she was and what she was—she was someone he could trust.

 

There hadn’t been time then; to say hello, to explain herself; to sweep him up in her arms and taken him off the path to the sorrow that she knew lay ahead for him. She had turned, felt the belated recognition of this youngest version of him, and vanished before his eyes before she could say even one word.

 

Later on, she would imagine snowflakes, white and melting on his dark lashes. This was simply a figment of her imagination, though; she had not been close enough to see. But she liked the image too much to let it go, and allowed herself to pretend that it had been real, to have this false memory of Cassian when he was still new, still innocent. Before everything was torn from him.

 

When she is in Wobani, waiting to jump, to be worked to death, or to be slaughtered by her cellmate in the dark of night, Jyn wonders if she would have actually had taken that chance and tried to save him then, if it would have been saving at all, or if by doing so she’d tear him out of the fabric of her timeline and never know him again. But she doesn’t know.

 

She is a time traveler who never has enough time, one who knows the past and the future and yet still knows nothing. It is ironic, but she cannot laugh.

 

+

 

 

Jyn starts time jumping when she is seven, just before her parents are ripped away from her. And for all of Galen Erso’s genius and Lyra Erso’s faith, neither science nor god could explain what was happening with their daughter. They only knew that it happened sometimes and that she came back whole and unafraid. Sometimes she returned smiling. Sometimes she came back with trinkets that she lined up against the window sill.

  

Lyra would not live long enough to find out the reason why, and Galen was taken before Jyn could give the explanation: a boy with sad eyes who held Jyn’s hand and told her it would be alright, that he would stay with her as long as she needed him.

 

+

 

Jyn cannot control the time jumping. There’s no pattern, no special thought or magic word that pulls her backward or forward in time. There is only one constant throughout: Cassian Andor.

 

When everyone else leaves her, when Saw abandons her with only rations, a blaster, and a broken promise, Jyn still has him. That is the only time she is able to jump when she wishes to, and in a wooded grove on some jungle planet that she’ll never know the name to, he runs a finger along her bottom lip, tracing her face like he can’t believe she’s there, and she feels herself tremble for the first time in her life when the reason is not fear. There’s a look in his eyes, and she wonders how many times he has seen her older self, how well he knows her when she’s still waiting for those days to happen.

  

He’s seventeen and he wants to kiss her. Would it be his first kiss? She doesn’t know. It would be hers. Jyn wants to kiss him, too, desperately. She wants him to be that first. She wants him to be that last. She’s loved him in so many different ways for so many years. What was one more kind of love to add to the list that only contained his name?

 

But there is no time, and as he leans in, she feels the oncoming glow, the heat that signals the end of a jump.

  

He calls her name, the warmth of his hands fading against her skin, and like that she is gone.

 

+

 

Jyn knows two things: One, that their fates are tangled together somehow, an invisible, twisted rope tying her rib to his, and two, that he’s the knot that she wants to pull tighter.

 

On Carida, when she appears before his eyes while he is undercover, Cassian wastes no time before he presses her into a wall, tattooing her skin with his kisses. Her blue ball gown is clenched in his fists rising higher and higher on her hips until she feels the press of him against her center. She sparks to life, hands greedy and grabbing at his Imperial uniform.

 

“Don’t make me wait any longer,” she breathes against his hair as he tilts her back onto a table. She pulls on the knot, tighter. Cassian does as she asks. He does as they both wish it and have wished it for what feels like always.

 

+

 

The jumps come faster and more frequent as she gets older, as though there’s a ledger of the number of times she has to do this before it stops, as though somehow time is running out to meet the quota before the last grain of sand falls from the hourglass. And then one day, it stops.

 

It stops the day she finds herself liberated from a death camp (though Jyn won’t know this until later), when she finds herself in a war room bathed in teal lights and staring at a general and a woman in white. “What is this?” she hisses.

 

“It’s a chance for you to make a fresh start,” the woman who is Mon Mothma tells her.

 

And then in the background in the darkness, Jyn sees another person. She’s been running so long and distrustful even longer of almost everyone that she skips all preamble of politeness or pretense. “Who are you?” she demands of the shadow, and then her breath escapes her body and she knows even before Mon Mothma speaks.

 

“This is Captain Cassian Andor,“ Mon Mothma says, "Rebel Alliance Intelligence.”

 

It’s the face she’s known all of her life. Jyn can’t take her eyes off of him.

 

+

 

“I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad,” she tells him a little later, lips quirked and mouth wry in a hangar bay on Yavin IV. They are readying themselves to go to Scarif. They are getting ready to go rogue.

 

Cassian steps closer, circles her, his eyes the softest thing she’s ever seen in a life that’s been all sharp edges. “I’m not used to some people sticking around, either,” he says, but then he gives a casual shrug and drifts into her orbit. “But if you’ll consider sticking around,” he starts. He wraps her hand in his. Their fingers are tangled together in the way their fate is. She tightens her grip.

 

“I think I might,” she says, and joy, rare and brief, a burning comet streaking through the sky, grips at her heart.

 

And he understands her as he’s always understood her. “Welcome home, Jyn,” he says, and she knows that she finally is.


End file.
